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Mr. Piekarski,

You left us so fast today! There was no resolve to our class, but I can almost bet that was not without reason since, as rhetoric has shown us, most everything is with purpose. Very clever Mr. P. Way to make us come to your movie showing. I'll have to save my guess for Sunday.

Thank you, thank you, for an amazing class. Your ethos as a professor and as a human being made this class a fertile garden for personal growth and budding. You Sir successfully created an environment that made us/me feel comfortable to speak and to voice our/my thoughts, and if our fruitful, revolutionary, discussions aren't proof enough well then, you're just a horrible observer. Last year I saw you as a very witty, occasionally sarcastic, type of character that knew his material well and got us to learn quickly. But this year I was able to see a genuine warmth in your character that didn't convey with irony but spoke rather in the Vietnamese manner of speech without irony. It was refreshing.

I learned about Vietnam. I learned about Rhetoric. I learned about the Rhetoric of Vietnam, and on another level, I definitely learned a lot about myself in very tangible ways. This will help me on my journey and direction in life. Thank you for this, your advise, your knowledge, and your kindness.

Hmm White Russians. A Big Lebowski thing I'm guessing. I gotta get to them pearly white gates, so I suppose that means I have to see this movie!

You never cease to amaze me, so I reckon you'll continue to do so. I'm ready. Show me your tricks, magician. 

An Inconvenient Truth

1. Ethos
Gore tells us that he's been working on the global warming issue since he was in college with his professor Robert Revelle.
--> So believe him because he has experience on this topic since 1960-something

2. Humor
* Jokes about losing the presidency.
* "The student went on to become a drug addict and a n'vr-do-well. The teacher went on to become science adviser in the current administration."
-->serves to keep the audience engaged and interested.
-->asserts Gore's ethos as a well-rounded character who isn't just a lame glacier hugger
"you've heard of off the charts" when following the increasing CO2 level in the electric platform lift
--> really wants to emphasize the point of the super high CO2 level as a significant matter!

3. Visual images
Pictures of a pretty blue and green earth juxtaposed to melting glaciers, empty lakes.
--> used to make us feel anxious over immediate danger

4. Logos
--> Gore's visual graphs that represent trends of CO2 and temperature levels as they've increased throughout the years as evidence of global warming.

5. Pathos
Juxtaposition of images
ex. glacier in Argentina 1928: big white beautiful.
versus the same glacier in Argentina 2004: almost entirely gone

6. More Logos
"When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer because it traps more heat from the sun inside."

7. Ethos
* Gore's appearance: wearing a suit, freshly clean shave, nice hair, shiny shoes, professional presentation

8. Pathos
Brings up Katrina
--> wants us to get emotional through the images of people suffering and voice over of a man in distress.

9. Gore presents the material using language that's easy to comprehend. And if we don't understand his simple explanations, the Simpson's simplifies his point even further.
--> Gore has the audience in mind and wants everyone to understand.

10. POLAR BEARS!
The best rhetorical device in my opinion.
--> Gore seems to ask without asking, "You wouldn't want to make a cute, fluffy, polar bear drown now would you?!
----------

SOLVED

I'm ready for my four guesses.
Scratch that, keep your four guesses.
All I need is one.

Be amazed.

Interesting PBS show on the expanding powers of the executive and it's constitutionality. The show's kinda long (three parts) but you should watch it if you have time.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10262007/watch.html

I'm ready for home. You know I'll hardly have time to breath before it's time to come back again . But it'll still be a nice and very much needed break. I'm ready for the end of Fall07 ...

Taps

I only have a purely emotional reaction to share.

When we watched Maya Lin in class on Tuesday I cried. None of the other movies that we have seen so far have produced in me a moment of such intense reaction the way this documentary has. Full Metal Jacket was disturbing, the killing and shooting in Platoon was upsetting, and Hearts and Minds made me cringe and disapprove of an American government I already disapproved of. The images in all these movies were horrifying, all the killing had the appearance of being real, and the fighting was violent and disgusting, but in all their horror, my eyes never watered. All it took in Maya Lin was one scene after Maya spoke to everyone at the Vietnam Memorial. After all the speeches and the ceremony the film shifted shifted to images of people from the crowd approaching Maya and thanking her. After or during that scene (I can't remember the exact point), over the humming of the crowd pierced the anthem of the dead- Taps. And I, I am shot. Taps continues to play and the camera shifts over to a long shot of the black memorial and at the bottom of the screen a tiny American flag propped up against the wall. What really got to me in this scene wasn't so much the seeing- the images were far from shocking or grotesque- instead it was the 3 note lament of a single haunting bugle that made me feel. I could actually feel it resonance in me as the sound came out of the bugle, passed the speakers, and into my ears. 3 notes, 3 notes and one bugle and I've felt more for a moment that I have in an entire semesters worth of watching movies and documentaries on the Vietnam War. That song is no ordinary song. It's not even a song, it's a a lament, a sad, sad, requiem for the dead. It's pain, it is suffering, it's agony, all of it in a single line of music played on one horn. When I heard Taps played in class, I remembered instantly the funeral I went to this summer for my mother's uncle (may he rest in peace) that served in the military during WWII. I never knew the man. I had no emotional attachment, nothing to cry about. I was there to pay my respects as a relative and to support the family. I never knew the man, but 21 rounds and 3 notes later I wept for him. I felt the vibrations of bullets penetrating through the air, the crack of the barrel, the perforating sound of the horn shake my very being. It was like I could feel the presence of death and it gripped onto me and pulled tears and muffled whimpers out of me. It was like I experienced, in a very small but very real way, war, grief, and death. There is something terribly haunting and melancholy about that 3 note melody and when I heard it in class, I relived the sensations of the gun shots, the whizzing bullets, the Taps, the weight of the air heavy with grief.

I'm not done. I'll finish this later.